


The Great Human War

by Authorticity



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Bastardly Actions, But They're Still Humans, Conspiracy, Humans are space orcs, Immigration & Emigration, Outer Space, Politics, Stupid Problems Requiring Stupider Solutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 01:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21007139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Authorticity/pseuds/Authorticity
Summary: The movement of people is always a complicated issue. Even more so when they're humans.





	The Great Human War

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short story I originally wrote for my immigration class that I thought I might as well share. It's very different from my usual work, and it's...a little vent-y, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

“We are going to light this entire planet on fire,” Zarrit announced, “With us on it.”

The bartender twisted their face in an expression that Zarrit would choose to interpret as polite agreement. Reading human emotions was not an art Zarrit was fond of at the best of times, and if there was a single day in their life farthest from the _best __of times_, this was it.

The fact that they were here on Earth at all was an affront of the highest order. The fact that they had spent an entire solar cycle on this horror show of a planet without coming any closer to achieving their goals was even worse. The sooner they left this death trap of a planet, preferably alive, the sooner they could nurse their pride and figure out how they and their people were going to save seventy-five thousand people.

Earth was the sort of planet that you either enjoyed from a distance or under duress. Between its wildly varying yet entirely inhospitable weather, sordid political climate, and the fact that its native population was as unkillable as they were eccentric, it was one of those planets that the Galactic Congress left alone in hopes that its population would integrate with as little fuss as possible. It took a certain kind of person to thrive on a planet like this one, and the idea that there were eight billion of the unsettling little primates had doubtless kept many an interstellar politician up late into the night.

Zarrit buzzed a little faster, trying not to envy their human bartender’s single, heat-trapping mass and insulating layer of fat. Even here, in a relatively benign part of the planet, the weather was the sort that would have killed had it taken place on Zarrit’s home world. Earth’s environment was rich and varied, in that each landscape tried to kill you in a completely new and unexpected way. It was also depressingly predictable. Was it too hot? Perhaps. Was it too cold? Likely. Was either extreme barely acknowledged by the native inhabitants, save for perhaps an extra layer of clothing? Absolutely. Zarrit tapped the bar, trying to ignore the fact that their irritation with humans’ sturdiness was masking their irritation for another aspect of human behavior.

“You and who else?” the bartender asked.

Zarrit regarded them. Their long hair would have been a sign of status on some other planets, or a mark of defiance on another. He scarcely dared to imagine why a Human would choose to wear their hair long. “What?”

“You said that you were going to set Earth on fire,” the bartender said. “You and a group. I was curious, that’s all.”

“Ah.” Zarrit pulled out their driver’s license and showed it to them. “Zerans are hive minds. Plural pronouns, my friend.”

“Right! Right.” The bartender smacked their forehead. Zarrit watched warily for signs of violence. “Yeah, I should’ve known that. Sorry, man.”

“A kind mistake,” Zarrit said. “The kindest we have endured today by far.”

The bartender slid a drink towards them. “You wanna talk about it?”

Zarrit prodded the glass. “Any drink strong enough to inebriate a human would kill us.”

“Yup. It’s apple juice.”

Zarrit sipped. It tasted sweet, and free of toxins. They took a long pull.

“What do you know of the Persephone colony?” they said when they were done. The bartender’s face settled into what was presumably a neutral face as they leaned against the counter, ready to listen.

“Sounds Earthly,” they said neutrally. “Centauri Sector, I’m assuming?”

“Andromedae,” Zarrit corrected. “One of the largest independently governed colonies to date. Or it was. It’s been disbanded.”

_That_ certainly got their audience’s attention. It was almost unheard of for a colony to be discontinued under all but the most dire circumstances. A colony was as crucial as it was expensive, and getting rid of one tended to cause the sort of problems that had brought Zarrit to Earth in the first place. In a cleaner, neater universe, the news of the Persephone Colony’s disassembly would have been posted across the news feeds for stellar cycles.

“Why?” the bartender said, loudly, and winced. They leaned forward surreptitiously. “There hasn’t been...you know. A—a political conflict, or a--”

“A war? No.”

The bartender physically cringed, glancing around the bar as though checking for eavesdroppers. “Language, jeez! What’s wrong with you?”

Zarrit blinked, hopelessly lost. “I apologize?”

They hissed, looking unhappy. “That’s not—that isn’t a good word on Earth. People don’t—just don’t say it, okay? Not unless you’re actually talking about one.”

“Of course.” As if this planet wasn’t weird enough. Humans were a species known for their capacity for destruction and cruelty, but just as much for their strong pack-bonding instincts and protective streak. A race of contradictions. Sounded just like Zarrit’s luck, that they should be forced to deal with them under the circumstances. “The Persephone colony has been spared that misfortune, thankfully, but they have been beset by many others. Do you know soil pox?”

The bartender sniffed at him, face twisting. “When the sun bakes the nutrients out of terraformed soil faster than you can put it back in? That’s third grade biology stuff, man.”

“Quite. Yet, due to mismanagement, the Persephone colonies did not report that conditions were unfit for long-term settlement until well after the population had established itself. The soil upon Persephone has finally run dry, and the remaining government had reached out to nearby planets in hopes of securing means of transportation and relocation for its population.”

“I think I see where this is going,” the bartender said dryly. “How big is the population?”

“The overall population was just under three hundred thousand,” Zarrit said morosely. “Of those, about eighty thousand remain on the colony with no apparent way off it.”

“How do you ignore the fact that your dirt is broken long enough for three hundred thousand people to establish themselves when you’re supposed to be doing nothing but_ looking at dirt?_” the bartender said, horrified.

“We don’t know,” Zarrit said honestly, “and we will be suitably amused by the situation once the remaining people have been accounted for. Of the remaining population, Zaren can accept five thousand under refugee status.”

The bartender sputtered. “Out of--!”

Zarrit gestured to themselves. “_Hive mind_. Zarens are walking overpopulation problems. The effort to clear enough space for them to live has already displaced entire towns. We are doing what we can under the circumstances.”

They studied their apple juice. It was a vaguely disquieting amber color, like certain kinds of blood. They did not feel like taking another sip of it. “Seventy-five thousand people, most of them Human colonists settling from older off-world sites. A sizable Martian population, in fact.”

“So you wanted to bring them here,” the bartender said.

Zarrit buzzed in amusement. “No. We want to bring them to Chull. It’s the only occupied planet near enough to arrange transport that could possibly support them. The others are gas giants. Except that according to local law, in order to attain refugee status, you need to have previous citizenship to give up in order to qualify. It’s a matter of--” Zarrit tried to keep the distaste out of his voice. “--_honor_.”

“Hang on,” said the bartender. “I thought that immigration was an intergalactic issue. Local laws take a backseat.”

“There aren’t supposed to be _local_ _laws_ in the first place. Unfortunately, the Saturnine W—the Saturnine _Conflict_ rendered the only intergalactic treaty regarding universal rights null and void. There’s been a new paper in the works for about twenty-five orbital cycles, but it hasn’t gone much of anywhere.”

The bartender sighed. “Okay. _Okay_. I’m invested now. So, the refugees need prior citizenship, except that colonies don’t do that.”

“Indeed. Since so many colonists have Earthly ancestry, speaking loosely, and since Earth _does_ have universal citizenship laws, your world is the most suitable candidate for the task. In a perfect world, Earth would announce that the refugees are planetary citizens, the refugees would formally renounce that citizenship during the pertinent ceremony, gain the legal benefits therein, and integrate into Chull society with the minimal amount of fuss.”

Zarrit fell silent. Around them, the bar made the expected bar noises. A group of avian being chatted amiably in the corner, nearing the first side of buzzed. A human looked up from their phone to greet a friend, apparently unaware that their headphones had come unplugged and the device in their hands was now blasting classical music out of tinny speakers. There was so much life packed into a relatively small space. So many people, so many stories, so much potential for good will. The fact that a place like this could exist at the same time as people wept and starved used to sicken them, but they were too old now to begrudge people their happiness. The goal was spreading it around, not stamping it out.

The bartender—who was wearing a name tag with the name _Maria_ printed in marker, Zarrit finally noticed—went to refill someone else’s beer. When they came back, they just leaned on the counter wordlessly, waiting for the rest of the story. What a nice, respectful human. Zarrit was impressed, given the amount of bared teeth and loud voices they had endured today.

“If your government allows _these_ colonists citizenship,” Zarrit said eventually, “they will be forced to grant citizenship to _any_ colonists that request it. This is unacceptable, for reasons that have yet to be explained to me.”

Maria the bartender wrinkled her nose. “The overpopulation crisis of the late 2260s. A bunch of countries sent a chunk of their population into space, then really quickly changed the law so that they had to go through naturalization in order to come back. And when you’re dealing with deep space transmissions that take days to go from one planet to another, that’s rough.”

Zarrit considered this. “I don’t like this planet.”

Maria nodded sympathetically. “Me either.”

They were quiet for a while.

“So, what’s next?”

Zarrit buzzed morosely. “I go home and tell my superiors, and we figure out how to keep seventy five thousand colonists from starving long enough to get naturalized somewhere else. Or until someone farther away than the Chulls takes notice, which isn’t, frankly speaking, very likely.”

Maria reached over the shoulder and patted Zarrit approximately where their shoulder would be, if they had one. “It’s kind of killing me that this is the first I’m hearing of it. My girlfriend is interning as a computer scientist on a colony in the Kuiper Belt. Like, that could’ve been her. Can’t you--” Maria wrinkled her face, thinking. “Can’t you post all this _online_? Or—well, that maybe wouldn’t work. Not unless you just started campaigning.”

The Internet had once been a remarkable tool for passing and sharing information at high speeds. Now that the sheer volume and range of that information had far surpassed that which its original creators had anticipated, it was less of a tool and more of a multicultural fever symptom. The best metaphor probably involved filing one’s cuticles with the flat side of a chainsaw—too fast, too big, too much, and altogether an unwieldy endeavor that was bound to cost someone a limb. Zarrit buzzed derisively, taking a gulp of apple juice. It was beginning to grow on them.

“What does it take to make people outraged?” Maria asked suddenly. “Like, what would really make them pay attention?”

Zarrit looked around. Two humans were whispering urgently in the corner, looking shocked and delighted. A particularly rowdy table was celebrating some sort of annual personal achievement.

“Shock,” he decided. “And emotion. People are alerted by that which astonishes them, and that which keeps them invested.”

Maria buzzed in their human voice, low and monotone. It sounded thoughtful, Zarrit decided. “Soil pox isn’t very shocking, is it? I mean, it doesn’t stick with you.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Zarrit said uneasily. A thoughtful human had a bad habit of turning into an unpredictable human.

Maria looked straight at him. “Would you be willing to do something just the teensiest bit illegal in order to help these people?”

There it was. That was the spark that had shaped Earth into a reflection of its people. That was the energy that had made humans the stuff of legends and nightmares, the driving force behind their society. There was the quiet, pleasant madness that had shaped galaxies.

Zarrit was less surprised than he should have been when he said, “Absolutely.”

…

As soon as Maria got off shift, she called her girlfriend. “Would you like to commit some crimes for a good cause?”

The line was silent for a few seconds as the signal bounced all the way from Earth to the edge of the local solar system. Then it was quiet for a few more seconds as a signal bounced back.

“_You are out of your mind,”_ said Pia. _“And so am I, because I’m willing to hear you out.”_

“I love you,” Maria said wistfully. She explained both the situation and her idea.

“_I mean, I can do it,”_ Pia said, after a technological pause that still managed to seem incredulous. _“__Planting th__ing__s in __the Internet is l__ike trying to break into the ocean. It’s so big and so—so _pointless_ that no one would even think of trying to stop you even if they could. __But __I need you to understand that__ you’re __completely__ right. __T__his is _explicitly_ illegal. People have been getting in trouble for this since the War of the Worlds __fiasco __caused mass panic.”_

“We’re not going to cause mass panic,” Maria insisted. “Mass _compassion_, maybe, but when is that ever a bad thing?”

“_You’re insane. I’m really proud of you. I’m gonna go to bed, because it’s like 2AM local time and I’ve got rovers to program in the morning. Call in like four earth hours, and we can figure out our game plan in the morning before my shift. Love you.”_

Maria said she loved her too, and dove for her laptop almost before she had hung up. She had so _many_ fake articles to write.

…

A little over a month later, twelve different investigative reporters received twelve different messages from their respective superiors. All of them were frantic, and all of them were furiously incredulous that they had managed to miss this. So many local news were covering this, and yet it had been lost in the dark crevasses of the Internet. _What have you been doing all this time? Get some sources and for heaven’s sake, have something for tonight’s broadcast. Lives are in the balance._

Each message was titled _RE: The Great Human War_.

...

“It’s not funny,” said First, leader of the Chull.

“It’s a little funny,” Second, second in command of the Chull, muttered. “Humans, right?”

“Humans,” First agreed darkly. Zarrit very wisely kept their mouths shut.

Zarrit had slipped warnings into the suitable ears ahead of time; and by the time news of the Great Human War in the Andromedae Sector had actually reached the Andromedae Sector, everyone more or less knew to play along. Laws had been upturned in short order, boosted to the top of the priority list by the shock of this new, unheard-of crisis. Taboos are only taboos when they stay in the shadows, where they belong. When they are thrust into the light, people are fond of anything that will get them to go away. The sooner the problem could be solved, the less people had to look at it.

Except that now the laws had been passed, the refugees moved and precedent set, people were beginning to look around and go _hey, wait a minute._

Zarrit was quietly, deeply glad to be here, on Chull, and not in the line of fire. The fact that his co-conspirators were also well and accounted for was also a plus, but it was difficult to muster the energy to be worried about a human. They had a way of affecting the world far more than the world seemed to affect them.

Zarrit took notes on the meeting, as he had a thousand times before. The human delegate was sticking to their story that the laws would have been passed anyway, without the hoax of a made-up war, and that there was absolutely no chance that citizenship could be revoked.

“Of course not,” said First. “Now that they are citizens of Chull. We take care of our people.”

There was a thinly veiled jibe in that. Zarrit dutifully made a note.

“We are, of course, working tirelessly to apprehend these terrorists,” the delegate went on. “This behavior is unacceptable and it will not go unpunished. We are following leads in the Tauri Sector, and expect to have them in custody before the end of the orbital cycle.”

Maria lived in Cancun. Zarrit kept all his eyes on his paper, and paid no attention to the human making thumb’s up signs at him from the benches next to the spokesperson for the Persephone colonists, who looked as though she was trying very hard not to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Article 13 on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:  
1\. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.  
2\. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.  
Article 14 of the same treaty:  
1\. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.  
2\. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.


End file.
